A Rain of Frogs ~ The Quilter who went to Hell

six stories and a novella—coming in 2012

Libby Pease is my favorite person out of all of Willipaq County—an evocation of the usually broke and always hopeful denizens of, perhaps, just perhaps, Washington County, Maine—living free and wild in their very own Yoknapatawpha.

At the age of sixty-three not much has happened to Libby Pease. She has grown up, aged in place and hardly noticed it. Geometric perfection and precision stitches are Libby's strong points; she is a quilter much celebrated for her execution of traditional designs. “I have a cat,” says Libby.

The Red Sneaker Zones

“I shall wear purple.” Libby Pease touches the framed poem that hangs on her kitchen wall. Libby could have memorized the verse, but prefers to be surprised by it. “All the damned thing says is that when you're old people expect you to be aligned a mite off center...” says the 400-year-old Algonquian spirit-priest who regularly joins her for morning tea, “...look at me.”

Chimaera Constant

“Sweet Jesus!” Elizabeth Profitt Pease has—for just a moment, a split second—the queer idea that there is an eyeball in her cup. “Uh... hello, eye.” The eye does not speak. She takes a swallow of Dr. Pomeroy's straight from the bottle and shakes her head to clear it. She squints; the eye in her teacup squints back. The eye is hazel and clear. It is her mother's eye. “Peculiar,” says Libby Pease and drops the cup.

Grasshopper Dreams

Noses were crinkled, then relaxed. In death as in life Pansy Graham was preceded by the clinging aura Dicey Pease identified as the yellow bar soap provided by the Daughters of Milo. It was the soap that killed him, Libby―Elizabeth Profitt Pease, Dicey’s daughter―would think many years after the event. And, with the olfactory short-circuiting attendant on her own aging processes, Libby the daughter believed that she, too, could smell the Milo’s soap. As the neighborhood women―wives, mothers―undid the corpse’s nightshirt, the smell issued forth: an aroma of heathery dawns on a highland moor with industrial bass notes of citronella and carbolic acid. “The Milos,” sighed Dicey, wife of Profitt Pease and the mother of Elizabeth, who would be a quilter of some renown, but not yet.

Blue (as in an Early Frost)

“ELIZABETH.” It was Tina Powers. In the TV. She was shouting above the whine of the vacuum. Libby turned it off. “That’s better,” said Tina.
“You have been watching me,” said Libby Pease.
“Every minute,” Tina smiled from inside the television. “You never do anything.”
“I thought you had died. You have been away.”
“Another soap. I was over at ABC for seven years. Contract problem,” said Tina. In the background, a handsome man, fifty-something, sixty, perhaps—steel-gray hair cropped short—approached Tina; she pretended to be surprised. “Oh!” He nuzzled her neck and bit her on the ear. “We are having...” Tina’s voice grew hushed, “...an affair.”
“With, with...” Libby tried to call up a roster of characters from the program. “Each other...”
Tina giggled. “Silly.”

St. Velcro™ and the Swan

It had been, by the saint’s count, a thousand years or more since the last tour passed through—Attila and his Hunnic Horde, their hardy ponies pulling an endless cavalcade of Airstream trailers that stretched to the sunrise. “I’m a martyr,” said the saint. “Martyrs don’t shoot back.”

The Diplodocus Effect

You knew right off Mr. Ebersol was not from around here. That he was a strong-arm guy, rouged cheeks and cupid's bow mouth notwithstanding, I did not doubt. His titanium white makeup and the knob on top of his head reminded me of a Japanese theater character. I nicknamed him Kabuki Boy “Hand over your PlayPal,” he scowled. There was a tiny crash of thunder as a miniature ecosystem formed up over his head. Kabuki Boy carried his own private climate. Interesting, he was the interstitial equivalent of a repo man. And he wanted Hubert back.

And... The Beewolf,  a novella:

A tall insect with feathery antennae and a nervous tic paused before the mirror of a machine plastered with multicolored blurbs announcing it as a dispenser of a popular brand of chewing gum. The walking horror spoke to his human companion. “Harry, you wait with the bags, there’s a good fellow.” Evenly modulated tones carried the force of a command. The man, bent under the weight of an assortment of holiday luggage, shrugged it off. The bags fell around him flashing a rainbow of unlikely colors and synthetic fabrics. The man shuffled in a circle as if deciding on his next move. He started to fall and caught his balance with arms extended, airily flapping his wrists in a butterfly pirouette. Passersby stopped to watch.